Iowa's Jordan Bohannon high fives head coach Fran McCaffery following their 96-87 win against Illinois during the Big Ten Basketball Tournament at Madison Square Garden on February 28, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Abbie Parr/Getty Images)

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Iowa's Jordan Bohannon high fives head coach Fran McCaffery following their 96-87 win against Illinois during the Big Ten Basketball Tournament at Madison Square Garden on February 28, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Abbie Parr/Getty Images)

For the ninth time in the past 12 seasons, the University of Iowa will not be playing in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament when it tips off this week.

In those dozen years, there’s been a mix of over- and under-achieving Hawkeye teams, but not a single one was as defensively challenged as this season’s squad. A drastic improvement is needed on that end of the court or Iowa will be outside of the field of 68 again next season.

Because of the season-long problems on defense, the program’s direction is now a 180-degree pivot from this time last year. Remember the optimism when the young Hawkeyes rattled off seven wins in their final 10 conference games to push their way onto the NCAA Tournament bubble?

Contrast that with six losses in the final seven regular-season games this season.

Or a combined 0-13 record against teams that qualified for the NCAA or NIT tournament.

Or more than half of their 19 losses coming by 11 points or more.

The Hawkeyes surrendered 78.1 points per game and ranked 245th in adjusted defensive efficiency this season according to Ken Pomeroy’s (KenPom.com) metric. Both were dead last in the Big Ten by a wide margin and among the worst in the power conferences. More KenPom advanced metrics like effective field goal defense and defensive turnover rate were even worse.

Only a handful of power conference teams have played comparably awful defensive since the beginning of the 2013-14 season. None of them were close to sniffing a bid to the Big Dance either. Those squads did unanimously improve on defense in the following campaign, however, so the chances Iowa’s defense gets worse next season are almost zero.

Two teams -- North Carolina State and Arizona State -- improved enough overall from the 2016-17 season to earn an at-large NCAA bid. Both raised their respective adjusted defensive efficiency numbers to rank inside the top-125 after being No. 229 (NCST) and No. 257 (ASU), respectively, a year ago.

The other defensively-challenged teams improved their overall records by an average of around seven victories, albeit every team had fewer wins than the Hawkeyes’ 14 this winter.

How about the worst finishers in the Big Ten Conference since it expanded to 14 teams four years ago?

Three of the 14 teams that were tied for 11th or worse improved their conference win totals by more than three games – Minnesota (2015-16 to 2016-17), and Ohio State and Nebraska from last season to this season. The Gophers and Buckeyes made the NCAA Tournament, but the Cornhuskers were left out, even with 13 conference wins on their resume.

The others were a mixed bag. Two teams actually got worse in terms of conference wins. Two teams had exactly the same records. The final seven averaged an improvement of two league victories.

A multiple-win improvement should happen next year for Fran McCaffery’s program, especially if the disastrous season serves as the ultimate reality check for the current group of extremely talented players.

Whether it’s enough to take them back to the NCAA tournament will ultimately depend on the team’s commitment to defense. Anything less than a fully-connected unit from the opening tip to final horn of every game, will probably keep the Hawks from dancing again next March.